“What is it, my darling?”

She heard herself say that, and felt him shudder.

“Don’t let me go!”

“Carr-what is it?”

He told her then, lifting his head and speaking just above a whisper, as if the breath had gone out of him and he had to struggle for it.

“That man-I told you about-the one who took Marjory away-and left her-I saw his photograph-in a paper. It’s James Lessiter-”

She said with a gasp, “Carr, what have you done?”

“I haven’t-I thought I should if I stayed.”

The fear which had touched her was still cold at her heart.

“What happened?”

“Henry Ainger came in-he brought some papers for Rietta. Afterwards Fancy and I were looking at them-Rietta had gone to the telephone. I saw that man’s picture with his name under it-James Lessiter. I told you Marjory had kept his photograph-it was the same one. Rietta came in-I asked her, ‘Is this James Lessiter?’ After that I don’t quite know what happened. She said, ‘Yes,’ and I went out of the house- I wanted to get my hands on him-I knew I’d kill him if I did. I’ve been walking-I don’t know how long-”

She looked across his shoulder to the grandfather clock with its slow, solemn tick.

“It’s getting on for half past nine.”

“I can’t have taken an hour to get here-I suppose I did- I think I started out the other way-then I thought about you. It’s all I did think about after that-to get to you. I’ve made a damned fool of myself-”

“It doesn’t matter.”

It came to him that what she had just said was the underlying fact in their relationship. It didn’t matter what he did or said, or what anyone else did or said, whether he went away and forgot or came back and remembered, wet or shine, day or night, year in year out, the bond between them held. He couldn’t put it into words. He could only say, “No, it doesn’t matter,” and lay his head against her shoulder again.

The passion of the last hour had gone out of him, it already seemed remote and far away. There was a renewing. They stayed like that without any sense of time.

At last she said, “They won’t know where you are-they’ll be worried about you.”

Elizabeth ’s world had come back to the normal again. It held other people-Rietta Cray, who must be terribly worried, and Jonathan Moore, who would be coming home after an evening’s chess with Dr. Craddock. She got up and began to make tea, fetching the kettle from the kitchen, moving about the small domestic tasks as if they were the whole of love and service. It was perhaps the happiest hour that she had ever known. To receive back all that you have lost, all that you have not even hoped for, to be allowed to give again what you have kept unspent, is joy beyond words. She had not many words.

Carr was silent too. He had travelled a long way-not the two and a half miles from Melling, but the five years through which he had come to reach this place again. When she said, “You must go,” he put his arms round her and said her name.

“ Elizabeth -”

“Carr-”

“ Elizabeth -are you going to take me back?”

“Do you want me to?”

“You know.”

There was a little pause before she said,

“Can you-come back?”

“Do you mean-about Fancy?”

“You said you didn’t know whether you were engaged to her.”

He gave a shaky laugh.

“That was just talking. We had it out on the way home. She’s a nice kid really-quite sensible and matter-of-fact. ‘No offence meant, and none taken,’ as her estimable Mum would say, so that’s all right. I’ve come back like a bad shilling. Are you going to have me?”

Elizabeth said, “I can’t help it.”

He took a sober pace back to Melling. The feeling of fighting time and space was gone. His mind was anchored and safe. Everything on the far side of the storm that had swept him seemed a little unreal, like a dream when you have waked up with the daylight round you. It might have happened a long time ago to someone else. He had Elizabeth again. It seemed the most amazing thing that he could have let her go. He began to plan their life together as he walked.

He came out on to the edge of the Green and saw it like a soft dark smudge under the night sky. There was neither moon nor star, but after the lane with its high banks and tangled hedgerows it seemed by comparison light. He could see the row of cottages away on the far side, and the black, crouched outline of the church. He kept the left-hand path and came up with the Gate House. Light showed through the curtains. Catherine was still up.

Such a little thing can decide so much. If Catherine Welby had gone to bed a little earlier, a lot of things would have been different. The light shining through her pale brocade curtains broke Carr’s train of thought and started another. If Catherine was up, other people would be up. In a flash “other people” became James Lessiter. He could hear Rietta saying, “Mrs. Lessiter never destroyed anything. He’ll have a mass of papers to go through.”

James Lessiter would be up. He could get the whole sordid business between them finished and start fresh. He wasn’t afraid of himself any longer. He could walk in, tell the swine what he thought of him, and walk out again. It was fixed in his mind that he must do that before the whole unhappy business of his marriage could be put away. It had robbed him of every illusion, every happiness. But Marjory was dead. He had to close her account with James Lessiter. As to touching him, he would as soon touch carrion. He turned in between the tall pillars and went up the drive.

The wall-clock at the White Cottage struck its three soft notes. Rietta Cray looked up incredulously. That it should be no more than a quarter to eleven seemed to give the whole lie to time. It was an hour since Fancy had gone up to bed, a quarter over two since Carr had flung out of the house. On any ordinary evening the time would have gone too fast. She worked hard all day, but once the supper things were washed up she could step aside out of this hard post-war world and become a leisured woman, with a concert, a play, waiting for her at the turn of a switch, or a book to take her here and there in time, or anywhere in space. But this evening there were none of these things. No enchantment has power on the racked mind. She did not know when so heavy a fear had weighed her down. It was past all reason, but she could do nothing to lift it. She told herself that she would laugh at it tomorrow, and tomorrow seemed very far away.

The house was dreadfully still. She missed the old dog who had died a month before, friend and companion of fifteen years. She would have to get a puppy, but she had put off for the old dog’s sake. It was too quiet here alone at night.

Then, into the quiet, there came footsteps-not in front from the path skirting the Green, but from the back, coming up the garden. Like Catherine’s the room ran through the house, windows at either end. She heard the click of the garden gate, she heard the steps come right up to the back door and come in. She would have locked the door before she went to bed, but she hadn’t locked it yet. While she was up and about it would never have occurred to her to lock her door.

But the footsteps frightened her now. They had come down through the wood, as she herself had come an hour and a half ago. They had come down from Melling House. They were in the passage now, and the door opened. Carr came in and shut it behind him. He leaned against it and said,

“He’s dead.”

Rietta stood looking at him. His face was pale and stern- dreadfully pale, dreadfully stern. There was no wildness in his eyes. They looked at her, and she looked back, whilst everything in her froze. When she said nothing, Carr raised his voice to her as if she were deaf. He said,

“Do you hear?-James Lessiter is dead.”